The Other Half
by TheScreamingViking
Summary: Soulmates were for life, whether you wanted them or not. Seph/Ti, angst, bad ending. Canon compliant if you squint.
1. Chapter 1

There was someone in Sephiroth's mind.

He noticed it upon waking, one cold morning in a Wutai forest. A silent, unasked for presence in the back of his head.

He stared at the canvas of the tent's roof, the poorly mended hole a ninja had cut in it. His sleeping bag was pulled up over his nose. He recognised the presence for what it was but didn't know what to do with it. He was sixteen. That was old to be developing a soulmate.

Hojo had been relieved when puberty came and went without any connection appearing. Soul bonds were a distraction and a weakness, he said, a vulnerability that compromised objective thought. That made sense to Sephiroth. He was trusted with a great deal of Shinra's classified information, having some stranger with access to his head was indeed an unacceptable vulnerability.

Easy to say that then. What was he supposed to do about it now? He could find them and kill them, he supposed. That would certainly break the connection. Possibly at the risk of damage to himself, but Shinra would likely prefer he be injured over compromised.

He mentally prodded the presence. It didn't do anything. It didn't feel like much either, it wasn't even noticeably foreign. And yet he knew intrinsically that it belonged to someone else.

He lay still for a few more minutes, cataloguing the phenomena.

When nothing more revelatory happened, he got up and went about his day.

Their position in the forest was not stable. It had taken months to capture what they had, and the enemy endured still, every day that they took new ground they ran the risk of losing it behind them. He moved their camp to a more defensible location and spent three days and nights cutting down enemy units while his men set up the fortifications anew.

Standing in what passed for a command tent, covered in mud and filth, he requested over the radio to skip his quarterly return to Midgar for Mako boosters and a physical.

It was pointedly denied.

A thin sigh escaped him and he pinched his aching eyes closed.

"We'll lose the territory again as soon as I leave," he said, already resigned.

"You have your orders, SOLDIER."

"Yes, sir."

He had dodged it once, and only because pickup physically couldn't reach him. that was how he knew he didn't actually need another Mako shot yet, and the physical itself was just a formality at this point. It was nothing more than a powerplay from the Science Department and it was going to cost them lives and territory. Again.

The presence at the back of his mind opened and he felt angry. Indignant. Months of work would be lost, just so he could come back afterwards and do it all again next quarter?

He paused. The anger trickled through his mind, disturbing his calm. Curious. He examined it from all angles, trying to discern the shape and nuance of the foreign sensation. It was angry in ways he typically wasn't, with a self-righteous, defiant edge to it.

The connection in his mind quietened again, taking the anger with it.

That was going to be dangerous. Such a thing could threaten his equilibrium, possibly even compromise decision that needed to be purely objective.

It was troubling, but now he knew to be alert for it. It was odd that it had reared its head during a conversation, but not once during the previous days of combat. He would have to investigate it further until he had a better grasp of the mechanics.

What did it mean about whoever was on the other side of the connection that anger was the trait they brought to the table? He wondered, feeling quite self-indulgent at the train of thought, what traits he was providing them with.

He left to go pack his kit and abandon the outpost he had just secured.

There were folktales claiming soul bonds were a matter of opposites finding balance. The sort of unsubstantiated mystical thing Genesis liked. Perhaps, as such an angry person, they were getting his logic and calm.

It was a comforting thought.

* * *

Tifa was eight and her mother had gone over the mountain.

Dad told her to be good, to be brave. So did all the adults in the house, smiling awkwardly at her, in their black clothes and holding the little sandwiches Mrs Schmidt brought out after the burial.

"You're being so brave," they said. "She would be very proud of you."

She wanted to run and hide under the stairs. But Mum hadn't liked it when she did that and Dad told her to be good. Be good for mum. She scrunched her mouth up to stop from crying.

There was another sad person pretending Mum wasn't really dead in every room she entered. Over the mountain. Did they think she was stupid? They put her body in a box and put the box in the ground. She had been there.

Dad was watching her from the corner of the room with tears in his eyes. He kept looking away every time she looked at him. The house felt so small and her head felt fuzzy.

She couldn't breathe. There wasn't enough space, there were too many people, they were all lying and she couldn't _do anything_. She stomped her foot and went outside. She wanted to slam the porch door behind her but it was attached to an arm that made it close slowly no matter what you did. She crossed her arms.

She stared up at the mountain.

The fuzziness in her head was getting worse.

She started to run. That felt better for a moment, the wind was cold and the gravel crunched under her nice shoes, but she didn't care. She kept running for as long as she could. Her head stopped feeling fuzzy and she didn't feel so trapped.

Then Cloud caught up to her, and the bridge collapsed.

By the time her Dad found them she was panicking. He blamed Cloud but Cloud was hurt and it wasn't his fault, it was hers, she just- she just wanted Mum back. Her head felt so fuzzy.

It wasn't until much later, when Dad had calmed down, all the people had gone home and she was tucked into bed that she thought about the way her head had felt all day. The fuzz had gone away but something was still different.

Her Dad sat on the end of her bed, his elbows on his knees, staring bleakly at the wall.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I know, sunshine," he sighed. "I'm not- I'm not angry."

She nodded, unconvinced. "Is your head-friend alright?"

He looked at her with a frown. "Of course. They're safe on their Chocobo ranch. Why?"

She picked at the scratchy wool blanket. "How did you know when you got them? In your head?"

"I…Tifa, honey," he paused and patted her hair gently. "Is that what you think happened today?"

"I don't know." The something in her head felt like maybe it was a someone.

"You are very young for it. It's alright if you did just… I'm not angry at you for running away." He smiled, that same awkward smile all the adults were giving her all day. "We don't need a soul bond to make us act a bit silly sometimes."

She sank down in her blankets. "My head feels too full."

He looked at her closely, his mouth wonky with his thinking face. "Alright. Would you like to tell me about them in the morning?"

She nodded and sank down further until her head was under the blankets entirely.

"Night, night, my little sunshine."

"Goodnight," she said. She heard him click the light off and leave, shutting the door behind him.

"Goodnight, she whispered to the something that might have been a someone.

That night she dreamed she was in a helicopter. Greenfields were speeding away below and golden sunlight was reflecting on the glass. It was so quiet.

The presence at the back of her head was still there when she woke up. She felt calmer.

Maybe… maybe Mum had sent them.

She didn't talk to Dad about it that day, he was too sad, and thought she had forgotten.

She saw them sometimes. Well, she saw through them. She was playing behind the house when suddenly the fuzzy spot in the back of her head did something and she could see two things at once. The house was still there, and the scraggly grass and the mossy tree stump. But she could also a table covered in papers and a man in suit sitting on the other side of it. She couldn't hear anything, but their mouths were moving and sometimes they adjusted the papers. It went on for some time, and she grew disappointed. It was so boring. Eventually, it faded away without anything interesting happening and she went back to playing.

In her dreams, she was floating in green water in a glass tube. She woke up feeling like her room was too small and opened her bedroom door. She didn't sleep with it shut again after that.

Her dad was surprised when he asked a few weeks later and she said they were still there.

"What are they like?" he asked, looking worriedly up from pouring pancake batter.

She hummed. "They're tall." The ground was so far away when she saw through their eyes.

He laughed. "That's not what I meant. Do you know how soul bonds work?"

She shrugged. She had read the books and seen the cartoons. It always ended in kissing in the stories, but her dad had never even met his one, and he wouldn't have kissed someone who wasn't Mum anyway. She knew it was rude to ask about someone else's soulmate.

"You're a little helper for each other," he said, expertly flipping the first pancake. "When you're getting overwhelmed they pop up and give you some of their strength. Whatever that looks like."

"They don't feel strong." They felt.. tense. Like bad things were coming and they didn't know what to do. Or maybe that was just how she felt. How was she supposed to know what was her and was them?

"Not actual strength, its what's strongest about them. What makes them _them_, deep down inside."

She frowned. That didn't make much sense to her.

He saw and ruffled her hair. "My soulmate gives me curiosity. Oh, they're so nosy, they get into such trouble." He smiled sadly. "I would never have met your mother if not for them."

She gave him a hug. He wrapped one arm around her and kept pouring and flipping the pancakes with the other.

"I don't know for sure, but I think I share my sense of fairness with them," he said.

She didn't think that was true, but she didn't want to say.

"You know when you see what they're seeing?" he asked, carrying two full plates to the table. "That's you helping them."

"Helping them how?" she asked, following him with the maple sauce and butter dish. "What's my strength?"

"I don't know." He picked up his cutlery with a wink. "That's your soulmate's little secret, isn't it?"

* * *

Sephiroth didn't report the change.

He had intended to, had even drafted half the report in his head on the flight back to Midgar.

Then he was met at the landing pad by a trio of Turks. They escorted him to meet the President at a party of executives. He stood silently in his armour while the president showed him off and told jokes he didn't understand. The meeting, or party, whatever it was, lasted hours, and he didn't know what was expected of him except to stand there and be speculated upon.

Anger trickled slowly into the back of his mind. He locked it away.

Midway through, his vision doubled and he saw a grey sky behind the silhouette of a mountain. He blinked, unmoving. He had expected this. He watched intently, trying to uncover as much as he could about them. They were running, the scenery blurry and vague as it passed them by. They came across a rope bridge and slowed their pace. He couldn't see it, but he felt someone was behind them, he willed them to turn and defend their back.

Instead, their vision swung down to the bridge supports.

His gut clenched. There was no sound but he could almost feel the fraying rope snap. The bridge collapsed. The bottom of a rocky ravine sped up to meet them. The vision dimmed.

"What do you say to that, eh, Sephiroth?"

"The north is better fortified than the south," he replied on autopilot, his mouth suddenly bone dry. "Progress will continue to stall."

There was a "tch" and a couple of rolled eyes around him.

"But that's what you're there for, isn't it, boy?" President Shinra said, slapping him on the back.

But he wasn't there. He was here. Doing nothing.

He stared fixedly into the middle distance. Had the fall killed them? He prodded the connection at the back of his head. It was still there.

The vision slowly returned, blurrier and staring up at the grey sky. A middle-aged man's face floated into view, too close to his, theirs, panicky and on the verge of weeping.

He blinked it away. The room's attention had drawn away from him. He let out a strained breath.

He was excused soon after. He marched down to the science department for his physical examination and a debriefing. He was given a Mako bath and idly prodded the presence his head while looking out through the glass wall of the tank. It was an increasingly secure node like it had sunk its pilings deep into his mind.

He felt useless. Just as trapped and ineffectual inside his head as he was out of it. But they were his. He had tried not to think on it too subjectively since its appearance, but that was what it amounted to, no matter what personal significance he gave it. They were his and he was theirs.

Hojo asked if he had anything to report.

He did not.

* * *

Tifa was pretty sure they worked for Shinra. She saw the logo in her visions and dreams often enough, emblazoned on walls and stamped onto paperwork.

She was pretty sure Shinra wasn't very nice to them.

As the years passed it struck her as odd that she really only saw through their eyes when they were talking to people. Sometimes during arguments, but the channel would stutter and falter if people started yelling or fighting. She didn't know what that meant. Talking to people obviously stressed them out, but what about other stuff? Burning the toast and setting the fire alarm off? Sleeping in and being late for the day? She never saw anything like that. Maybe their life was just so boring that unpleasant conversation was the most stressful thing that ever happened to them.

All she really knew was that they felt lonely. Well, that just wouldn't do. She cared for and loved people as good as anyone else, maybe that was her strength to share, maybe that was why they were partnered. To balance each other out.

She concentrated next time her vision doubled and tried to send love and comfort down the channel.

It frustrated her that she couldn't just be there. She imagined a quiet, skittish little person, surrounded by people who were obviously mean to them. Midway through a game with her friends, she scowled at the sudden vision of the same old grumpy looking men giving them a hard time. Why did nobody see how stressed and lonely they were?

Cloud wilted at her suddenly severe expression. He had run off by the time she blinked out of it.

It all made her want to march down to Midgar and free them. She'd give all the people who made them feel so trapped and helpless a piece of her mind.

She felt the channel in her mind open when the teacher held her back for not doing her maths homework. She froze in the sudden sensation that she was stuck and failing and would never escape maths ever again. It was silly, it would end, she could see the clock. Dad would get angry at her, but no worse than he did when she forgot to hand in her assignment the last term. She grumbled at her paranoid soulmate and refused to panic. She buckled down, did the work, and handed in her completed worksheet, feeling very proud of herself. She hoped her soulmate saw.

Other times the channel opened and it hit so strong she couldn't do anything at all. She got home and dad wasn't there. She ran to his office at the town hall building, but he wasn't there either. She ran to the graveyard and nobody was there. Maybe he was at the hospital. Like Mum.

She felt so useless and alone that she burst into tears. Dad found her there some thirty minutes later, having panicked himself and gone looking for her at school.

When she had calmed down enough, he suggested she take up martial arts to feel more confident. Master Zangan had come back to town and had offered to train anyone interested.

She stood opposite the scary-looking master and bowed like he told her. She had never fought anyone or anything before. He led her through the basic movements of a beginner and then said she would practise against him.

She sank into her opening stance, unsure on her feet, and the channel in her mind opened. She looked at her opponent, suddenly hyper-aware of everywhere that he could trap or hurt her. It felt different during a fight, like a little paranoid voice in her head telling her not to yield ground or she'd never recover it.

Frustration over all the little things in her life bubbled up. She let them all out against Master Zangan, who defeated her soundly. Then he helped her back up, and they did it again.

It became routine and she learned to listen to the obsessive presence looking out for threats from the back of her head. The practice became meditative. Deep into her training, mindlessly going through drills and practising against her punching bag, she found a wonderful soaring place where it felt like her and her soulmate were working towards the same thing for once. It was so peaceful, her fists thudding against the leather, that she didn't ever want to stop.

Master Zangan complimented the speed with which she picked up the form.

She sat up in bed one night, unable to sleep. The channel had been humming open and closed all day, not quite strong enough to show her whoever was picking on them, just enough that she knew they were having a bad day. Or night. Whatever time it was where they were.

Her vision doubled, suddenly strong and clear. The sky was grey like the sun was about to come up, and there were mountains in the distance.

Bodies lay on the ground around them, stretching away in every direction.

She covered her mouth with her hands.

They were standing in front of the body of a First Class SOLDIER, with grey hair and a grizzled, scarred face. His empty eyes were open.

She tried to look away but couldn't.

Her soulmate sat by the dead SOLDIER and did nothing.

The sun rose and the sky brightened. She cried, her eyes squeezed shut, but the vision not fading. The channel stayed open, stronger than it ever had before. Like they were calling on her for strength. She tried to help, to push whatever she had at them.

Then the channel snapped shut, sudden and jarring. The presence was dull at the back of her head, there but closed and pointed.

She didn't sleep that night. Or for many nights after that.

Chased by the faces of the dead, she climbed the mountain again. She didn't run and the bridge didn't collapse this time. She roamed the high slopes and found freedom up in the thin air and winding paths.

Whatever her soulmate was going through, she couldn't help much. She tentatively tried at the presence and the channel opened. A cold wind whipped past. Even with the intensity of feeling her soulmate sent, she couldn't feel trapped or helpless out in the open. She felt free and in control of herself.

With the channel open she stared at vast view of the lands below. It was beautiful in a bleak way, and she hoped they could see it. She made a habit of it, muscling through the unhelpful sensation they sent to show them the little joys she discovered. If they picked up even half of what she tried to send then they probably knew the mountain as well as she did.

It became her escape and she climbed the mountain over and over until she was the undisputed expert on the dangerous terrain even though she was only sixteen. She grew to think of the trails as theirs: shared walks she took them on

She didn't see any other terrible things in the visions, in fact, she saw almost no visions at all. She didn't know why they had been on that battlefield and she refused to try and think about it. It was too terrible.

She sat on a ledge high up the mountainside, looking down on the plains while she ate a peanut butter sandwich.

Most soulmates never met. She knew that. But she entertained the idea, she was a strong fighter and getting stronger by the day, Master Zangan said. She could get them away from whatever Shinra had over them and together they could… she didn't know.

She imagined kissing them. Upon the highest ridge of the mountain, by the view that she liked to show them. It would be just before sunset when the sky turned golden.

Her legs swung over a steep drop and she hummed a song she'd been learning to play on the piano.

She had a job the next day: guiding some Shinra folk up the mountain trail to the reactor. Maybe one of the party would know them.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews are always welcomed._

_Next Time: The Nibelheim Incident._


	2. Chapter 2

Sephiroth entertained the thought of meeting his soulmate, from time to time.

If the channel opened at just the right time perhaps he could read their name on something, and if he saw enough of the scenery he could discover their location. He could figure out the rest from there. If he could shake off the Turks long enough, he could write to them under a false name. He wouldn't be able to see them in person but he could maintain a dialogue, and perhaps they could get to know each other properly.

He never could, of course. It would be immediately discovered, and the Turks had a sub-department that existed for no other reason than hunting down soulmates of people with access to classified information. They didn't necessarily kill them, but none of the other options were acceptable either.

He kept his secret and did nothing. He drafted little letters to them in his head after especially trying days when the channel opened strongly in either direction. Explaining or advising them on what happened.

"Other half needs you, hmm?" Genesis asked one day in the command tent.

Sephiroth blinked away from a fistfight with a wolf. "I don't have a soulmate."

"Oh, of course not."

He narrowed his eyes at him.

Genesis rolled his eyes back. "Neither do I, naturally."

He leaned back. No SOLDIER was supposed to have one, but it was a harder thing to police than Shinra fancied, evidently.

"Is it Angeal?"

Genesis shook his head. "Angeal really doesn't have one. He doesn't seem to mind."

"It's probably simpler."

"A simple life would be a less interesting one," he said, relaxing on the uncomfortable camp chair like it was a throne.

Sephiroth didn't know about that.

"What are they like?" Genesis asked.

"What yours like?"

Genesis gave him a frown for his redirect, before tossing his hair back.

"_Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess_. They are… inspiring,"

Sephiroth leaned his chin on his knuckles, indulging him. "Are they your muse?"

"I wouldn't insult them by reducing our connection to such a thing. And yours?"

He shrugged. "I don't have one."

Genesis scowled at him.

"But if I did, I imagine they would also be… inspiring."

"Hm." Genesis smiled. "Secretly a romantic, I see."

Sephiroth ignored him and went back to his work.

That night he dreamed of his soulmate playing piano. It was simple and sweet, even if he couldn't hear it. He fancied he could feel the threads of focus and contentment they found in it. It made for an intriguing contrast against the anger they shared during the day.

He watched them train and climb mountains over the years. It was a quiet joy he relished. They progressed quickly with a good teacher, throwing themselves into unarmed combat with any monsters they found on the mountainside. In time he learned to pry open the connection and check in on them.

He caught sight of a hot drink in front of a fire while snow fell against the window. Legs swinging over the edge of a ravine while they ate a sandwich. A view of distant farmlands marching down from the heights. He picked up that they lived on the eastern side of the Nibel Mountain range, likely in one of the tiny villages nestled under the range's shadow. He refrained from thinking about the location any further. It was a dangerous amount of information already.

More often than not, he blocked the channel from going the other way. He didn't need the antagonising swirl of anger, burning like an open flame. They did not need to see the things he did. He got older and the war did too. He was numb to most of it, but not so much that he didn't know that the things he had to do were terrible.

The anger simmered.

Genesis' soulmate died.

He didn't say as much, they were simply discussing materia theory one day when he froze, his eyes staring off into nothing. He recoiled as though struck and all colour drained from his face.

He shut his eyes, his forehead lined with pain. Then he turned and left without a word.

They never spoke of it again.

Sephiroth forced open the channel of his own soul bond. They were still there, training their kicks against a punching bag.

He sank into it, hiding in the mindless peace.

Genesis defected.

Angeal died.

They both left him behind.

There was so much anger.

He checked in on them more and more as everyone left and the scrutiny he was under intensified. They remained untouched, still climbing their mountain and playing their piano. In an isolated little bubble it felt like some days, a sacred little place where the world wasn't falling apart.

He wondered if, after all this time, they understood him.

* * *

Sephiroth paused outside the gates of Nibelheim, his head down. He felt disquieted.

The trooper who hailed from the region had already put him in mind of homes and places to return to, which always left him unmoored.

After a conversation about the mother he never knew and the father he wished he didn't, he sighed, laughed grimly at his own foolishness for indulging it, and passed through the gates. The path rounded the nearest building and he saw the shape of the mountain for the first time. The thousandth time.

His breath caught. He should leave. He should go back to the truck and make Zack do it.

A small welcome party came out of one of the houses behind them, he spun and met half a dozen faces he already knew and one he did not.

A teenage girl cowgirl outfit looked up at him, her eyes opening wide and-

The channel slammed open from both ends. Anger and helplessness spiked and flooded in both directions, his vision doubled, and he saw himself from someone else's eyes.

Zack handled the conversation. He barely heard any of it. He towered over her in her eyes and she shrank back, confused.

A lifetime of expectation and elaborate theories, for this. A child in a silly costume. He wondered at the depths of her rage. How... petty it all was.

"This is my daughter, Tifa," a man whose face he had known for eight years said. "She'll be your guide up the mountain."

Her complexion had paled at the sight of him. She was openly staring, rooted to the spot.

He nodded at her father then turned and entered the inn, leaving them behind in the street.

Zack and the troopers came soon after. He sent the local off to go see his family. He probably knew his face too, if the boy ever took his helmet off. He gave orders for the next day, the humdrum of just another mission to a remote reactor town, and they all left him alone on the top floor.

He let out a strained breath. It was all so meaningless.

He looked through the window, up at the silhouette of a mountain he knew as well as Midgar's streets. Rumbling anger flowed through the topography of his mind, staining everything. It had become normal since Genesis and Angeal left, a rising tide he waded through no matter how hard he tried to keep the channel shut.

He wondered whether or not it was still hers.

She was staring out of her own window, watching the inn's entrance.

He felt shame for having wanted more from her. More of something that never would, never could, be anything at all. Mostly he just felt trapped. Bound to some child who did not understand him. And never had.

Just one more person who would either demand of him or abandon him.

* * *

She felt helpless like she hadn't in years. She could normally muscle her way through it, then they-he-_Sephiroth_ looked at her and it was like a cage crushing her in place.

She didn't understand. He looked as unshakeable as he did in all the posters and newsreels. How could he possibly feel these things that all but paralysed her?

She felt so very small in front of. She rallied and pulled herself up, but too late. He spun and marched off.

The others dispersed, and Dad called her to come home for dinner soon, and then she was alone in the street.

All her questions about Cloud had scattered. She ran home and slammed the door.

She was so stressed the channel wouldn't close. She paced, trying to escape the sensation of being trapped.

Tomorrow would be better. They wouldn't take each other by surprise, they knew who was who now. They had the whole trip up the mountain to talk figure it out. Oh. She would be taking him up the mountain trails.

Tifa pulled herself up to her full height. Yes. Tomorrow would be better.

She dreamed she was staring at the ceiling of the inn. It looked a lot like her own ceiling.

Getting sick of that, she got up bright and early.

All of her bold plans and resolve collapsed. He wouldn't talk to her. He barely looked at her. No matter how brave she tried to be about it, it all evaporated into just doing the job. She led them up the slopes, her mountain, along what she had held to be their trails.

But now it was just a job for Shinra, and it felt dirty and cheap.

He clearly knew the way too, but hung back and pretended otherwise.

She asked about the Mako springs and he answered, neutral and indifferent. She didn't know how to ask with the other soldier and trooper around. She couldn't bring it up if he wouldn't.

She caught him watching her with cold eyes.

It felt like a rejection. Like she was useless. She felt angry at him for betraying her like this.

The channel stayed open and her vision kept doubling. She didn't know who was doing the sharing, or if it was just a feedback loop now.

They marched on. The bridge collapsed. She couldn't even bring herself to be surprised.

He caught her before she could fall.

"Why did nobody fix the bridge?" he asked to himself.

"Nobody ever fixes the bridge," she replied, sullen. The places on her bare waist he had put his hands to haul her up onto solid ground tingled. Feeling resentful and silly she wished she could have just jumped and made it herself.

They made it to the reactor with no further incident. Whatever happened inside was bad enough that the channel strained to open, but he kept her out and she got nothing but a headache.

He walked back down the mountain no longer pretending he didn't know the way. He marched into the Shinra mansion without a glance for anyone else.

She went home and sulked over her dinner. Dad said he was relieved she hadn't come down with starry eyes and dreams of SOLDIERs. She went and fought her punching bag until she was too tired to stay awake.

She dreamed of books.

The channel stayed open all week. His hold on it relaxed and she saw pages turning at every hour. She closed her eyes to books in dim lighting and woke to the same. Day after day.

When would he sleep? Didn't he need to eat or at least have a sit-down?

She asked Zack when he would be coming back out, but he told her it was Shinra business.

That was stupid. He might have rejected her but she was still worried about him. What was he reading down there that was more stressful than that terrible battlefield all those years ago?

The thought seeped into her that she didn't really understand him at all.

She stood outside the mansion one night. The trooper who usually guarded it had left for the evening, and she could go in. She had snuck this far determined to do so, to sneak down into the basement he was hiding in. She'd make him talk to her and find out what was so wrong. Then they could face it together. The channel had grown in the last week alone, a tide's worth of feeling moving through it. Whatever he was getting from her he was inundating himself in it.

The same was true for her. She reached a hand out for the door, fighting against a tidal wave of helplessness. There was no escape. There never had been. This was her life. Her hand shook, not yet touching the door handle. It overwhelmed her. Her hand dropped. She ran back home.

* * *

All of the reasons Sephiroth had ever constructed to reject anger and pain and open emotion crumbled one by one. Carefully maintained borders washed away in a tide of pure fury.

Curious, that a human should have shown him the way.

* * *

Tifa woke up later in the night.

She didn't feel helpless or trapped. She blinked and didn't see any ghostly books superimposed over her surroundings. She let out a relieved breath.

She was angry at him for doing this to her, but she was done pouting over it.

Whoever had hurt him wasn't going to get to do it again. She was going to do better, they both were. She had decided.

She kicked off her blankets, filled with great purpose. She was going to march down there and get past the front door this time.

There was a flickering red light coming up the stairs from the living room. She frowned at it.

She smelled smoke.

* * *

None of it really mattered after that night.

The presence in her mind that had once been so active dimmed to just a quiet node.

Her dreams sometimes still held books. They all ended in a great fire that burned the world down. The nightmares were hers and hers alone. She decided that was better.

Midgar was hard and merciless. She refused to let it make her feel helpless. Nobody could make her feel that. Her injuries recovered slowly and she took her martial arts up with even more drive than before. She had a reason to survive. She grit her teeth and pushed through every sensation of being trapped, weak, useless, overwhelmed. Shinra had done this, had built Sephiroth and set him loose. She found a purpose in hating them.

She met Barret and turned that purpose into action.

She prodded the presence sometimes when Barret talked about Shinra's crimes. Sometimes vindictively, sometimes in a surreal delayed sympathy that made her angry with herself. It felt oddly open, but the old tidal wave of helplessness was pointedly missing. It was just a phantom sensation. Maybe he had died with it still open and now it was just stuck that way, like a door someone forgot to close.

She dreamed of green again, like she had when she was little. So that was what happened to people whose soulmates had joined the Lifestream. She'd never thought to ask before.

A kind of lonely sadness took her when she thought on it too closely. So she opted not to. She leaned into her anger and new resolute purpose instead and found comfort there.

She didn't tell Barret about it, it wasn't something she could really tell anyone. The subject did come up though. Barret had been bonded with his wife. He didn't talk much about it either.

"I've never met anyone who…" she started, late one night when they'd had a bit to drink after the bar had closed and Marlene had gone to bed. She leaned over the bar on her crossed arms. "Anyone who actually fell in love and settled down together."

"We were lucky," he said, leaning back on his barstool, far enough she worried he might topple over backwards. "We were so damn lucky."

She smiled painfully. He did too.

"What was it like?" she murmured. She didn't want to ask, it would hurt. But she wanted to know. And maybe she wanted it to hurt a little bit. "When you first met?"

"Ah, Teef, it was, it was everything."

She looked down at the scratched and sticky bar top.

"Everything, huh?"

"It was like.. I'd found where I belonged." He took a long draught of his beer, finishing the dregs. "And so had she. Still two people, none of that 'now I'm complete' bull, but we were a team. We were united. Nothing could ever tear us apart."

"I'm so sorry," she said.

He sniffled. They both pretended he didn't.

He grew quiet.

She picked at the peeling varnish, feeling a shadow of old helplessness rear itself in her. Was it better to have had that unity, if you lost it all in the end anyway?

It didn't really matter, she decided. They had both lost. Shinra had taken from them both, in different ways.

"It's like a phantom limb in my head now," he said quietly, sometime later. "But they don't make prosthetics for that."

It didn't feel like an aching absence for her, but then why would it? They had never had that magical unity, had barely been so much as on the same sides. The peaceful meditation she used to find when training with the channel open was probably the closest they had ever gotten. She should have known it for a warning sign.

She still found a kind of soaring sensation when deep in her training. It was nothing like the peace it used to be, it was jagged and sharp and drove her to go faster, harder, longer.

"Mine's gone too," she said into the night. The sort of thing she could only say staring at the bottom of a glass.

"Did you ever meet?"

She shook her head.

He thumped her on the shoulder comfortingly.

"Probably better that way," he said, slurring slightly.

"Probably."

They found Cloud, and things looked up. He said such strange things, but she was just happy to have someone back.

In the quiet of the night, after they raided Shinra stores for weapons and explosives, getting ready to blow up a reactor, she faced the fact that Sephiroth probably didn't get compassion from her.

She dared to reflect on what she had gotten from him. How much of a harried victim he had always felt like. She didn't accept that. It wasn't any excuse.

They blew up the reactor. The sector 7 plate fell and Shinra caught them all.

In the dead of night, the door to the cells swung open. The halls of the Shinra building were streaked with blood.

She forced down her panic. Cloud led the way up to the boardroom.

A sword stuck up from the impaled body of President Shinra. Her breathing grew short with dread. A presence in the back of her head lit up, she was flooded with purpose, and she understood.

She threw up.

* * *

_A/N: Thank you for reading. Reviews are always appreciated._

_Next Time: Those Chosen by the Planet_


	3. Chapter 3

The walk to Kalm was long and quiet.

The scar of the fallen Sector 7 was a stark wound in the city's silhouette behind them. A column of smoke rose from it like a black flag.

Tifa tried not to look back. The air smelled of burning rubble and smoke. They kept walking, but the smell wouldn't dissipate, no matter how far away they got. She hugged her arms to herself and walked with her head down.

They had to get to Kalm. One step after another. Just keep going. Get to Kalm.

There was no wind. No birds singing, no workers in the field, just the dull thuds of their boots on the hardpacked dirt.

It reminded her of the walk through the Shinra building. It has been silent then too, just footfalls on cold, red-slicked tiles.

She shook her head, and instead she heard the screaming cacophony of the plate falling, supports bending and breaking, concrete cracking, metal tearing, and then falling, falling-

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath was picking up speed.

No. No. She stopped walking, clenching her jaw and bunching her hands into fists. She wasn't going to panic. She wasn't helpless, she was-

She had a purpose.

In her mind's eye, a sword rose from a bloody body. The body of someone she had wanted to kill herself.

Who's purpose, exactly, did she have?

Where did she end and he start? She had made some terrible mistakes and caused the deaths of so, so many people, could it be his fault? He was evil and hateful, had he given her the drive to do it?

Her shoulders fell. If it was him, what did that make her? Trapped _again_? Helpless next to him? Either that, or she stood on her own two feet, and was monstrous all on her own.

She looked back at the column of smoke. Gritty concrete dust was falling on the fields, it gathered in the seams of her boots.

"Tifa, come on," Cloud called from up ahead. The others were waiting for her. She hurried to catch up.

The channel had only closed briefly since the doors to their cell in the Shinra tower swung open to a blood-stained corridor. She tried to close it, to block off her traitor mind. The connection hummed, resolute, unshakeable, terrible, and every step felt like it could mean something, should mean something. She was so ashamed. Aerith looked at her with a weak smile. She forced a smile back.

They got to Kalm and checked in at the inn. Everyone crowded around Cloud to hear the tale of how Nibelheim burned down. The channel hummed and she tried to strangle it, tried not to cry.

He told the story all wrong. She didn't know why, he looked to her like it was all the truth, and she didn't know what to do. Her dad's killer was in the back of her head and she _didn't know what to do._

That night she dreamed of green again. She woke rejuvenated, filled with clarity and conviction, and- she shrunk in on herself. She didn't trust it. She didn't want that purpose, she wanted her own.

They set out to chase Sephiroth, and she felt like she was screaming inside.

It was easier when there was something to fight. Her heartbeat would rise and she couldn't escape the connection but when any wrong move could kill her she didn't want to so bad. She threw herself into the monsters that attacked, letting her fists and feet fly. It wasn't complicated there, nothing could be, in that heart-stopping place of adrenaline. She relished the struggle and the victory that followed, soaring high with it. Then the fight would end and she would crash back down to earth.

The purpose would still be there, humming in her mind. She rejected it. Cloud kept telling lies he seemed to believe. She didn't know how to ask him what was going on in his head when she barely knew what was going on in her own.

"You're not acting like yourself," Cloud said one morning.

She smiled at him, with no idea how to answer. She shrugged. She could have told him about herself. Would it help? She could have told him so many things. What would he think of her? What would he think of himself?

Who's side was she really on if she had Sephiroth in her head, she thought, as Cloud's eyes unfocused and drifted off. Soulmates were supposed to help each other. Was she meant to have done more back then, before, to have helped him somehow? Had she failed? What was she supposed to have done? What was she supposed to do now?

What did it say about her that she was Sephiroth's soulmate in the first place?

The channel was almost always open now, in a way it had never been, even when the connection was new and neither had any control. She knew it wasn't because he was in stress, he was watching her.

She told no one. She was trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

Aerith died.

She was angry. Furious, ashamed and still trapped. She broke down in the buggy when everyone was out looking for lunch, screaming down the channel.

It was a whirlwind of confusion and hesitation, every step felt wrong. Cloud was losing control and he looked to her to stay positive and focused. They walked together through the maze to the centre of the Northern Crater.

Illusions of Nibelheim as it had once been rose up around them. Burning. Her father was dead on the mountainside, Cloud was just a trooper, and she had hesitated for too long.

"Don't listen, Cloud, don't look," she said, desperate to hold it all together, the trap of her own lies.

"Why are you so scared by my words, Tifa?" Sephiroth said, watching her with cold, truthful eyes.

A shiver of terror raced down her spine. Her mind hummed. She turned away from them both and saw it from Sephiroth's side of the channel, her trembling shoulders and useless balled up fists.

Cloud shook his head, trying to block out the truth.

"Shall I show everyone here what's in your heart?" Sephiroth asked thoughtfully.

She spun back around to face him, bone-deep terror latching onto her. She felt, absurdly, betrayed. He had always known what was in her heart, had never valued it, why had she thought he would respect it now?

Cloud crumbled under the assault. She had nothing to defend herself with, let alone him.

When the illusion faded Cloud picked himself up off the ground.

"Let's go, Tifa," he said, quietly. "I'm... I'm all right."

He wasn't alright.

* * *

She stopped dreaming of green.

"Must be like having a soul bond with the crazy bastard," Cid said about Cloud afterwards.

A hysterical panicked laugh jumped up from Tifa's throat before she clapped her hands over her mouth.

Barret patted her on the shoulder. He didn't say anything.

Cid looked at her with a frown and then swore in realisation.

Nobody said it. Nobody threw any accusations. She heard them all the same. Cloud was in pieces, and she wasn't sure how far away she was from joining him.

She sat on one of the ship's outer decks, looking north. The meteor wasn't visible during the day yet. The channel had grown quiet since the northern crater.

Yuffie sat down next to her, her legs dangling through the bars of the railing.

"So, my soulmate's a Shinra intern," she said after a tense minute of pregnant silence.

Tifa looked at her in surprise.

"Or not really an intern. Like an apprentice accountant. It's still boring though." Yuffie's expression said exactly what she thought of it all. "Only pretending to be boring and Shinra-y, they would encourage me to do the dumbest stuff, but boring is still boring, right?"

Tifa smiled. "I'm so sorry."

Yuffie snorted. "They were working late in the tower the night that…um. The night of…"

Tifa's smile dropped.

"Yeah. So… I knew sephiroth was back before you told me. Just didn't know what it meant. At first, I thought it was just a weird nightmare. And I grew up during the war, hearing all the stories, nightmares about Sephiroth aren't that weird. Until the connection… died."

"I'm so sorry," she said again, this time meaning it. She put a hand on her shoulder.

"Like, nobody gets to choose, right? I didn't want a Shinra lapdog soulmate, and it's way worse for you."

She looked down. A blanket of clouds hid the ground from them.

"But it's weird," Yuffie continued, shrugging. "My friend's soulmate killed my soulmate."

"It is weird."

"He kind of did me a favour," she said with a broken, despairing laugh. "Do I thank you?"

Tifa grimaced. "Please don't." Her hand dropped.

Yuffie's shoulders sank. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean it like that." She let out a gusty breath, blowing her fringe aside. "As though killing one dipshit junior accountant is somehow worse than conquering home. Or trying to end the world."

Tifa leaned her forehead against the railing ahead of her. The metal was freezing cold. "I get it," she whispered. "I wish I could say that I hate him for attacking the planet, first and foremost. For being evil."

"I hate this," Yuffie muttered.

"Me too."

"Stop agreeing with me. You're the sensible one." She clenched her fist and smacked one against the railing supports. It did nothing but make a metal ringing noise. "I only had 'em for a year, only just got used to it." she smacked the railing again. "It's so quiet in my head now."

Tifa closed her eyes. "Mine too."

* * *

In the end, all she could do was hold it together. She could last until the world ended or it didn't. Anything else was too much. She saw the walls of Northern Crater in her dreams, the ice stained in reds and oranges from the light of the meteor.

She helped put Cloud back together, and he found himself again.

They would fight sephiroth the next day, and then it would be out of their hands. With straining, wavering desperation, she finally embraced the sense of purpose and decided to use it against him. She couldn't think of anything else to do. Soon it would be up to the planet.

She found Cloud sitting on the grass beneath the ship.

He was the only one who didn't know, hadn't figured it out. Sephiroth had threatened to show him what was in her heart, but he didn't follow through on the threat.

She coaxed as much purpose from the connection as she could and felt defiant. She wasn't going to make the same mistake twice by being secretive. She would tell him what was in Sephiroth's heart, see how he liked it. The connection hummed with life. He could watch her do it.

Cloud looked up at her.

"Hey, Tifa."

He was fiddling with the pink ribbon tied around his arm but didn't look at it. He pointedly never looked at it.

He smiled at her and patted the grass next to him.

He was different now. Newly confident in himself, but still shaky, his hope tentatively restructured. He still looked at her to be positive and focused.

She wondered at the return of the connection in her mind that had otherwise been so disinterested since Sephiroth had taken what he wanted from them.

What would it do to Cloud for him to learn that she was compromised? That she was as intrinsically bound to the monster and had been all her life?

What would it do to her for him to look at her and know that she had been Sephiroth's?

She watched the channel. It watched her back.

"I just…" she started. "I thought you should know…"

He gently took her hand, not looking down at that either. "Teef?"

She smiled. "That I'm really proud of you, Cloud."

Helplessness and purpose and bubbling anger that was purely hers brewed away inside of her. She ignored it all and did what she wanted to do.

Maybe she was getting played. Maybe he was relying on her hesitation again. Or on her shame at her past mistakes to overcorrect, again. All she knew was that she wasn't going to let him decide what she did.

She gave the best pep talk she could without having planned one and kept her problems to herself. The channel was open and she didn't care.

Cloud kissed her and she defiantly, purposefully, enjoyed it.

* * *

Sephiroth waited.

There was nothing left to do. His victory was assured. Soon all would be one with him, from the smallest blade of grass to the most rebellious of Shinra traitors. All would find absolution within him.

Mother's essence had already dissolved within him. The long years wore on her and her strength was best added to the magnitude of his own. He looked back on the role of one who's essence had refused to dissolve into his.

Tifa had been bound up with his mind in a way none of Hojo's weak copies were. None but Jenova had ever had a connection to him that worked both ways. His initial disappointment in her did not survive his time in the Lifestream, as he saw now that she taught him to crave justice for things that it did not yet occur to him were wrong. She had been a constant and irrefutable source of anger in the days when he could not face his own.

She stood sentinel at Jenova's feet and led him to her when the time came. She guarded the puppet's delusions until he required they be shattered.

Her connection had been a distant one, however. Always kept slightly out of reach. Even as he broke the puppet and tossed him aside, he could not take control of her through the channel, try as he might. She had many vulnerabilities, but a weak sense of self wasn't one of them.

But that too was fitting. She would never have matched his mind if her own was weak. His new purpose had only strengthened her, however ineffectively, against him. When she fought he soared with her, he relished her struggle, her endurance, and her victory. When she fought against him, they drew heavily from each other and victory was shared. When he triumphed and struck her down, she would feel his triumph forever.

He would accept no human counterpart, but he saw that she was his and he accepted that. Driven, defiant, and his. She knew it as well as he did.

Her look of abject horror and betrayal when he threatened to reveal what she kept in her heart lingered with him. He had always had access to her heart, she knew that. The idea that he would share it with another offended her. She trusted him with the aching depths of her heart, but not her teammates. He would not censure her for that.

She drew his eye, just as the puppet pulled her down onto the grass with him.

He was blandly amused. It was hardly surprising that she would crave connection with his copy, or that it would be reciprocated.

Soon they would join all the planet, and the need for connection would be forever satisfied. She would not have to make do with weakness and doubt.

The walls of the crater bled red from the light of his meteor.

* * *

Holy rose up to greet it and they flew down to meet Sephiroth. The fight was long and uncertain and Tifa's mind hummed throughout.

Cloud jumped through the Lifestream, his sword raised, and she saw it through Sephiroth's eyes. Everything slowed in that moment, the channel reaching out to her for strength, her reaching down it in panic. Her breath caught. The final blow landed. She gasped, up on a ledge in the crater.

The channel tore, mangled and vicious, and then violently snapped. A burning wound seared through her mind, a sudden aching absence where there had never been one before. Purpose, helplessness, anger, grief and shame and a thousand other shared emotions fell away.

For the first time in years, she was alone.

She broke down and wept.

The Lifestream answered Holy's call, its power shooting up from the planet's surface. They watched from the ship, as meteor was sundered. Her mind purged itself of a clinging rot.

"Wash it all away," she said, her eyes falling closed and tears streaming down her face. "Please, wash everything away."

And so it did.

* * *

_A/N: Thank you for reading. Reviews are always welcome. _


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